Category: Musings

Initially posted on Medium. You love your people, or you want to. So why isn’t your team killing it? We’ve all read hundreds of articles and books musing on the perfect recipes for success and achievement. So it should come as no surprise that you already possess the skills to turn any good team into a…

Since I didn’t publish last year, I’m taking another new year as an opportunity to reflect and give myself a clean slate for all the writing that is to come from my new weekly challenge in 2015. :drumroll: My top moments and memories of 2014. 1. Babies. What’s not to love about Facebook turning into…

I’ve been remiss in posting these past couple of days, only pecking at my drafts like a baby chicken hunting for worms. Partly because I’ve been taken in by a summertime sadness and have always struggled being anything but upbeat and optimistic in public spaces. Partly because I’ve put off packing for my vacation and…

The legend is true. I play bridge. It started a few years ago when I was dating a lawyer and we were looking for “the most entertaining and intelligent card game the wit of man has so far devised.” 1 Actually, I can’t remember what kicked off the intrigue, only that a friend had invited us…

Turns out that blogging every day is hard work. Even when I skip a day or feel like slacking and sharing pictures instead, I find myself writing posts in my head similar to when I used to think in Facebook status updates or tweets. It’s this virtual writing, not really writing, that tires me out…

I first encountered this phenomenon at BarCamp Portland and again at Open Source Bridge – both this year. Finally, all that “Where the Tech is She?” hype started coming true in 2013 and there were lines at OSCON. And I wasn’t the only one to notice. As I was sporting some fancy blue shoes, a lovely…

I can’t remember how the conversation started. My new housemate has a coffee sense about him and knows just when to wake up and walk into the kitchen – when the brew’s a few seconds from done. How we switched from the slow morning shuffle to talking about rooms for our robots I’m not sure….

I’m writing from I-5 on my way to the first ever Timber! Fest. (The exclamation is important, otherwise folks may get confused with the professional footballers.) While I had a few queued posts about my past week at OSCON rising, my baby brother, Jake, surprised me by strumming up a rendition of Of Monsters and…

IndieWebCamp happened and I missed it. However, I haven’t stopped thinking about it. Here’s what I’d heard at Open Source Bridge (as quoted on the camp’s website): IndieWebCamp is a gathering of web creators building and sharing open web technologies to advance the state of the indie web. We get together for a weekend to…

Make it Better I recently found myself tired of having so many experiments out in the wild of the internet – sites I’d created for one test or another, collecting dust and confusion. So I decided it was time to kill them. And to kill them, I just needed ONE. My dream: one, easy-to-use site where…

Sorry to have left this in disrepair. It’s been a year and I’m not sure when I’ll pick up the pen again. Well, that’s not true. I pick up the pen a lot … I simply have a hard time getting myself in front of the computer for fun these days. In my absence, I…

Yesterday I saw posts a flurry on the facebooks and twitters about the importance of so many 1’s in the date. Despite being a little bummed that the apocalypse didn’t happen as scheduled for viewing with a friend at 1:11 1:11 ’11, I realized this morning that much of what had been stressing me out…

OK, it’s not quite as straightforward as it sounds as it seems I’ve actually misplaced my driver’s license once again. On the bright side, I’ve finally finished (note that’s a lowercased “finished”) my collection of websites, including … drum roll … the simpler and quirkier jewel.mlnarik.com. This means I can finally tackle the family website…

One of my most favorite aspects of winter is the cycle of death and rebirth. So I figured, what better way to clean out my closets than to kill my old junky heap of a site and launch something new. I couldn’t kill it all, of course, so there’s bound to be some hiccups as…

Recently, I found myself wondering why it is I photograph. It’s something I’ve wanted to re-engage with, without really knowing why. And I needed a strong connection to make the time for it I’d need to commit. I was surprised at my self-serving reply: to find myself, or a place for myself, in this world…

It’s been raining seemingly unstop since April and, as such, we’ve been accustomed to the slug infestation. I rarely see snails, however, so I take my time playing w/the little fellow. I often forget the pleasure in taking 15 minutes to watch, breathe, listen. And, as I begin to prepare myself for another birthday, I…

Can you figure out the next word in this series? Good. Bad. Right. Wrong. Left. Right. Like. _____ Excellent! Now, let’s look at some numbers. (Quick caveat: this is quick math.) The USA has an estimated population of 308 Million. Of these, roughly 250 Million are 14-95. Facebook has 400 Million users world-wide. 70% are…

Not sure how to spell “cat-a-corner” or knowing if it should be “kitty-corner” I embarked on a brief little journey into the history of how words change as roots disappear and become obsolete as pop culture takes over. Did you know, for instance, that kitty-corner evolved from catty-corner, which evolved from catercorner? Catercorner was a…

OK, I’ll admit it: I watch a little TV and I get all pumped up. (You know: excited, hyper, talkie talkie.) Watching Michael Moore drive down Wall Street in his armored car in Capitalist: A Love Story, I can’t help but think of Paulson as the Greek (or Senator Davis?), Obama as Carcetti … Hmm,…

I first saw my favorite ad on mute, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. Perhaps you know the one: America, from Levi’s Go Forth Campaign. Visual poetry plucking at your soul strings vs your pocketbook–not your typical digest of capitalism. Over at Brains On Fire, they shared some historical context that further…